In this week's
edition of Kernel Cousin KDE,Aaron J. Seigo
covers the KDE 3 RC releases, the controversy about KDE 3 release
coordination, progress with KOffice,
trouble on the documentation front, and the newQt C# bindings.
Kudos to Aaron who, as usual, has wrapped a week's worth of development news
up in a succinct and pleasurable, yet informative, read.

This is pretty much unique for KDE project. Every other large project rests
on a very authoritative regime although they all claim to be democratic.

That is the number 1 reason for joining KDE project if you'd ask me.

I also have a conjecture to make here. Better programmers are more
open minded and care about the code more than they care about fame
or reputation. Whenever there is a large lameness coefficient in a
project, you will see people who are ego-driven, and involved in
tasteless conspiracies... This conjecture can be extended to other
professions/organizations such as companies and universities at your will.

In that case, I guess you believe that the Linux kernel project has a very large lameness coefficient. You see, I have been reading Kernel Traffic for over two years now and it has become my weekly soap opera. I don't think there is a project which has more ego-driven flame-fests than the kernel.

Some people say to that: "well, the really top hackers don't do it." These people (a) only think of Linux, Alan and a few others, and (b) have never taken the time to read up on Linus' flames. They should, it's damn funny at times:

It might be a good thing that there hasn't been much KOffice coverage until now, because it's still a beta (alpha?) stage project IMHO. I really think the revision numbering should be < 1.0 ATM!

I've spent a good few hours with 1.1.1 on MDK8.1 and reluctantly looked elsewhere for the time being.

HOWEVER there's a good future for KOffice because:

1) Star/Open Office still suffers from being far too heavyweight an app for many users and doesn't feel that intuitive to me. Does anyone really know what Sun's plans for this suite are?

2) I like Gnumeric and GIMP (fiddly to use!), but Abiword has never inspired. There's also the fact that many KDE users will lean towards KDE apps if they possibly can.

3) I'm a bit puzzled by the current Hancom Office 2.0 evaluation edition - bits seem excellent, but other parts seem very underdeveloped. I'm also not sure what the Kompany is up to with regards to this.

So most of the competition, though more developed, is not exactly there yet.

KWord will be excellent once WYSIWYG is sorted and filters improved - there's no question that frames make this app stand out.

KSpread is ok, KPresenter is fine, Kivio looks nice but doesnt seem usable without stencil sets, most of the other progs show promise. Then there's Kugar... hmm... is there any useful documentation on this one anywhere?

Once KOffice apps reliably support WYSIWYG and better filters, promote like mad and release regular, frequent updates - that will generate a lot more interest than there is ATM.

Doesn't make sense. KC-KDE is about development and every moves in KOffice CVS should be considered as development, too. We're talking about what happened in the CVS and mailing lists, not about the release version.

Yes, KWord 1.2 will have fully support for WYSIWYG and a few new filters.